


Later Still

by Siria



Series: After the Other [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-27
Updated: 2007-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney eyes the gloves John gives him dubiously--they're thick and padded, as if they could just as easily be used during space walks, or when dealing with nuclear reactors. "This very easy job requires safety gear?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Later Still

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Jenn](http://dogeared.livejournal.com).

Rodney eyes the gloves John gives him dubiously—they're thick and padded, as if they could just as easily be used during space walks, or when dealing with nuclear reactors. "This very easy job requires safety gear?"

John grins at him, because he knows that infuriates Rodney even more than rolling his eyes does. "A couple of hours up on the bog is hardly forced labour—"

"Except for how it _totally is_," Rodney mutters.

"—and I just thought you might like to see what's what. Y'know, what the childhood of someone who didn't grow up in the wilds of Foxrock—"

"Excuse me? _Drumcondra_," Rodney yelps, horrified.

"—was like. Plus I thought a couple of hours of forced labour might stop you from moaning about keeping a sod on the fire come the winter," John finishes easily.

"Well, yes," Rodney says, "but I don't seem to remember you complaining about the alternative activities we engaged in, hmm?"

John, who remembers a Christmas holiday spent curled around one another on the tiny couch in the cottage's front room, napping and reading and touching lazily; who remembers Rodney stealing his ratty old NUI Galway sweatshirt and wearing it almost non-stop for two weeks, until the worn cotton smelled completely of him; who remembers Rodney in a smoke-filled kitchen, declaring _fuck tradition, turkey sandwiches were clearly the stuff from which all future Christmas dinners will be made_—John, who remembers all of this, just smiles and says "Not really."

Rodney cuts off his answer when he looks over at John; he just flushes and says "Are we going or not?" and sets off, John having to lengthen out his stride to keep up with him, because Rodney's moving quickly though he has no idea where they're going.

The Sheppards' plot of land nestles up against the foot of the mountains, where the soil is wet and dark. It's too big to be worked by only one person, and the yield of turf is more than John could use even if he were to live in the cottage year round. It's mostly rented out now, piecemeal, the western half to the O'Sheas and the southern part to the Burkes, but for the past few years, John's come back in the summer to work a half acre on the eastern edge.

It's not that he needs to work even that much of the land, but he wants to. The memories of long weeks spent here every summer, full of teenage resentment at time wasted, have become transmuted into something else with time. Working alongside his father for hours in that peculiar kind of silence Bill Sheppard wore so well, rising and stooping in unison; breaking for lunches of bread and cheese, cool milk drunk straight from glass bottles stoppered with twists of brown paper; sitting side by side on sacks spread out across the damp, dark earth—he looks back on that now with something like fondness. Every time he comes up here, he sets to work under that same sky, labouring to regain that feeling of unexpected kinship with his father with every sod he turns, the time they had when it was just the two of them, alone in a landscape that never quite ends.

Working alongside Rodney (_Jesus, ow, I just got a splinter in my thumb, John_) might go against that. Then again, he thinks, straightening up against the ache in his back as they reach the end of the first row, looking out across the flat expanse of brown and green earth—then again, maybe not. And when he falls to again, their movements are in sync.

They break for lunch at midday, the weather unseasonably hot even for July. Rodney's still wearing his t-shirt, but John has long since stripped off his Galway jersey. They sit there, sharing warm tea from a thermos; Rodney talks physics and nonsense while the sun reddens the nape of John's neck, slowly turns the line of his back pale brown. John shivers when Rodney runs one palm the length of his spine, before letting his hand rest just at the small of John's back, when Rodney presses a careful kiss to a shoulder that's damp with salt-sweat and earth.

"Hey. It's not so bad up here, huh?"

John twists around to look at him, but the smile on Rodney's face is genuine and it's—something.

"Not so bad," John agrees; and when he leans in to kiss Rodney's smile, fit his hand to the curve of Rodney's jaw, it is a moment, transmuted into something else.


End file.
